Tuesday, July 5, 2016

The Airbus A340-300 owned by the S3 programme, a subsidiary of the Swiss Space Systems aerospace company, will bear the TAG Heuer livery when it starts marketing its S3 ZeroG flights around the world.

The S3 programme will give the public a chance to experience Zero Gravity at an accessible price, from over 15 destinations worldwide. The first flights will take place in Switzerland in September, before being inaugurated in the United Arab Emirates. This unprecedented experience will then be launched in Asia and North America.

In fact, TAG Heuer was the first Swiss watch company to go into space. That was back in 1962, when John Glenn wore a Heuer watch aboard the FriendShip 7 rocket.

This is a very select club: private A340s in an original configuration. And the flight plans are as flexible as those of a private jet. The aircraft can fly at an altitude of just 300 m, for example around the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc.

The Swiss watch brand will be fully engaged alongside the S3 team, for a different kind of partnership. First stage: the design and production of exclusive TAG Heuer S3 watches, which will serve as boarding passes to access the plane. Upon embarking, passengers must don special gear, leaving watches, jewellery and other valuables on the ground.

To celebrate the partnership TAG Heuer has created a new special timepiece: A black TAG Heuer Chronograph Formula 1 with a quartz movement accurate to a tenth of a second, in steel with a titanium carbide coating, featuring 25 seconds in red on the minute track - the time spent by passengers at ZeroG. The watch bears the S3 logo in the 6 o'clock counter on the dial, and comes with a black rubber strap also stamped with the S3 logo. The piece is engraved on the back with the plane's curve, which rises at 45°, as a souvenir of the passengers' extraordinary experience.

All in all, an ultra-exclusive VIP club of those around the world who have had "the Experience", a programme which will open up to more and more people, in keeping with the notion of accessible luxury that TAG Heuer holds dear, and an Avant-Garde enterprise that dares to be different, unique and innovative, just like TAG Heuer

Swiss Space Systems Holding SA is a Swiss company founded in 2012 in Payerne, Vaud, Switzerland which supervises the activities of its subsidiary companies. The objective of the S3 Group is to develop, build, certify and operate suborbital shuttles for small satellite deployment, up to 250kg, and to introduce the world's first wide-body zero gravity flight experience world-wide.